Many factors drive vehicle design, including increasing gas mileage standards and a desire to maintain or increase performance capability. As engine space for vehicles becomes more constricted, many changes are presented to improve engine performance while adhering to the space constraints in vehicles. More specifically, each vehicle model tends to have individually unique constraints on size, shape, control, and performance characteristics of its pump assembly. This can result large numbers of different/unique parts, large in-process inventories, and concurrently in relatively low volume runs of many parts. This in turn results in higher costs per part, higher costs per assembly, and dramatically increased complexity of assembly.
A pump assembly is desired that is capable of meeting performance and special requirements set by vehicle manufacturers, while also minimizing part numbers, while maximizing use of common parts on “related but different” pump assemblies, yet that maintains flexibility of design.